More questions than answers

This video reminds me of my question: How the heck does the plant know where the pole is?

Samuel Butler made similar observations in Erewhon, back at the end of the 19th century. I think he might have made a joke about potatoes having “eyes”.

I can guess that a plant might sense a sunny spot (the potato in a basement sending shoots toward a window’s light). Maybe it can sense heat and/or light. But how does it sense that pole? You see that it flails around a bit, searching, but it goes more or less in the right direction and doesn’t waste effort searching in a full circle.

How does the “losing” bean plant know that the other bean plant got there first? Can they communicate? Why didn’t the second bean plant just grab on and try to share the pole? Are there rules to this life-and-death game?